1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to pooling and advertising methods and systems for linking purchasers with sellers of goods or services, as well as targeted commercial messaging. More particularly, this invention relates to methods and systems for aggregating a number of potential purchasers for linking to one or more sellers of goods or services, as well as delivering targeted commercial messages to potential purchasers. The methods and systems may be implemented in computer hardware and software.
2. Background Information
Typical sales strategies involve mass-marketing to the consumers. Advertisers, for instance, use direct mailing to large groups of individuals, television broadcast advertising, and telemarketing to advertise and sell goods and services. Such mass advertising methods can be expensive and ineffective due to the lack of a targeted approach—only a fraction of the persons reached by such mass marketing will be interested in most offerings. Thus, the cost per acquired purchaser or customer is high.
Because advertisers know that only a small percentage of the mass-market audience has a real interest in the product or service being sold, they use entertainment value and content to attract the attention of the more promising potential purchasers. Thus, advertisers may place their advertisements in certain television shows, radio programs, or magazines where they feel a substantial portion of their most likely potential purchasers will see their advertisement. Such advertising strategies may nevertheless be both over-inclusive and under-inclusive, because the advertisements will reach many uninterested people and will miss many potential purchasers.
Information on consumers or potential purchasers can be very important to sellers of goods and services. Telemarketers and advertisers alike benefit from having detailed information about buying interests or capacities of potential purchasers of goods or services. If an advertiser, for instance, can identify and selectively advertise to those potential purchasers who fit a profile of probable purchasers of the advertiser's goods or services, the advertiser can reduce advertising costs by advertising directly to those potential purchasers. In other words, if the advertiser has both information about potential purchasers and more targeted access for its messages, it can achieve more purchasers/customers for the same amount of money. Useful demographic and financial information for such a strategy includes a potential purchaser's financial status, age, residence, family size/configuration, and interests in various goods and services.
If an advertiser has a large amount of demographic and financial information about a potential purchaser, the advertiser can potentially selectively market to the more promising purchasers for a decreased expense per sales transaction. The money saved by the advertiser can, potentially, be used to reduce the price of the good or service to the purchaser. Instead of advertising via radio or television broadcasts to the masses of potential purchasers, the advertiser can concentrate on specific potential purchasers who may be likely to buy a specific good or service and offer favorable pricing.
Although advertisers prefer to have detailed information about potential purchasers of goods or services, the typical potential purchaser would prefer to keep his or her personal and financial information private. There can be a trade-off, therefore, between achieving greater advertising power for an advertiser or seller of goods or services, and protecting the privacy of potential purchasers. Consumers and potential purchasers are concerned about keeping personal and financial information from becoming widely disseminated, both because of privacy concerns and to avoid unwanted solicitation letters and advertisements. These privacy concerns have increased in recent years with the emergence of the “World Wide Web” (“Web”) as a widespread source of data.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,210 to Goldhaber et al. (the Goldhaber patent) discloses an “attention brokerage” method, which is the “business of brokering the buying and selling of the ‘attention’ of users.” The Goldhaber method allows “users to choose whether they will view an ad or other negatively priced information and receive associated compensation.” Goldhaber patent, Abstract. Although the Goldhaber patent does disclose a method that creates an incentive for individual potential purchasers to view advertisements, it does not teach pooling of purchasing power to in association with providing updated and detailed information about potential purchasers to the advertiser or marketer of the goods or service. Other systems exist for on-line sales or auctions of goods or services, but these systems do not aggregate potential purchasers for linking to sellers.
A need exists for a new method and system that enables more efficient, less costly transactions between potential purchasers and sellers of goods or services, and allows sellers of goods and services to decrease their advertising costs. In particular, a method and system for reducing advertising costs per sales transaction is needed. Similarly, a method and system for aggregating a pool of purchasers for linking to sellers is needed. Finally, a need exists for a method and system for targeted delivery of commercial messages.